In honor of tonight’s Team USA game against Ghana, I started to think about what takeaways the games offered for property management workforces. After reading many, many lists of how and why athletes can be role models for many career paths, I’ve narrowed it down to my favorites.
Here are three pieces of advice for property managers gleaned from World Cup athletes:
1. Be a Learning Machine.
World Cup athletes spend hours practicing, studying their competitors, watching videos of their performances and session after session with their coaches and mentors. If the average person adopted just a fraction of this work ethic, the results they could achieve would be endless.1
What this means for property managers: It’s important that your building team is prepared to meet the needs of today’s tenants. Tenant service is a fundamental daily activity for most property management firms and yet most work order management processes and programs are stuck in the routines of the past. Property managers should be creating standards of service performance for their property, measuring actual performance against target benchmarks, and adjusting workflows and processes as a result of this insight.
2. Know Your Competition.
The World Cup tournament is divided into eight groups of four teams a piece for pool play. This stage is a round-robin process where each team plays the others in their group one time, with the top two from each group advancing past pool play. It’s critical for coaching staffs and players to familiarize themselves with their competitors, identifying their top players, strengths, weaknesses and more as they develop their game plan.2
What this means for property managers: Most companies have to compete for business to drive growth and commercial real estate and property management is no exception. Whether competing with the building across the street to lease space to a premier tenant or trying to land a new plumb management engagement from a leading institutional owner, they are in a battle to stand out and create competitive differentiation. When factors such as price and location are equal, considerations for experience, local market knowledge as well as size and reputation all contribute to whether business is won or lost. It’s essential to know your competition so you can be better.
3. Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.
The World Cup athletes have a “Whatever it takes” attitude. They’ve made the decision to pay any price and bear any burden in the name of victory.3
What this means for property managers: Modern property managers should never be satisfied with the status quo. They should always challenge themselves and their employees to be thought leaders and innovators who are constantly evaluating their performances to function more efficiently.
1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-siebold/10-lessons-we-can-all-lea_b_5491800.html
2. http://www.komarketingassociates.com/blog/5-lessons-content-marketers-can-take-away-2014-world-cup/
3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-siebold/10-lessons-we-can-all-lea_b_5491800.html
